Exclusive Interview With Jeremy Gislason
Of SureFireWealth.com

Part 3 of 6

LA - That covered a lot of things, could we just jump back and maybe go into a bit more detail into certain things?

JG - Sure

LA - Well as we are recording this it is February 2009 and obviously the economic situation isn't great. I just wanted to ask - if people aren't familiar with Internet publishing or self-publishing, why would you recommend it as a business? What are its benefits short term and long term? And how do you feel the economic situation would affect that type of business positively or negatively?

JG - Good question. A couple of things on that one, by publishing business you mean any type of online company making a product correct?

LA - Generally selling a product, more specifically information publishing really.

JG - So not a service related industry or something like web hosting, right?

LA - That's right. What you are doing, but I think we can include software as well?

JG - Okay - making software, selling it, making eBooks selling them, videos, audios correct? Information publishing?

LA - Yes.

JG - Sure, well, I think there has never been a better time to get into the information publishing online business ever, because there are so many tools nowadays to make life easy and it's so cheap to do it.

As an example, if you are going to go into offline publishing... if you were going to be a publishing company you would need investment capital of at least several million dollars just to get started because you needed that to buy a building, buy all the printing presses, the equipment, hire staff, get everybody in place, get your shipping in place, get your marketing in place, direct mail...

You either have to go the direct mail route which is very expensive and if the direct mail campaign fails it could be $500,000, a million dollars potentially and many times companies in direct mail, they need to test the offer three, four, five or six times before they find a letter that works and brings in a profit.

So they might lose two or three million dollars before they start making a couple of million. Of course, when they start making it they can make 100 million but the point is it was so expensive to start an offline publishing company.

It still is expensive to start an offline publishing company whereas on the Internet you can get started for - I am serious - under $100 dollars a month. All you need is an auto-responder system or an email management system such as Aweber.

These are third party services where you can basically control your mailing list. So you can accept subscribers to your newsletter, your e-zine, and your membership site if you want.

If somebody buys your book they can get on your mailing list for that book for updates. If somebody buys your software they can get onto the software mailing list. Or maybe you just want to give away something for free - in return they will be on your mailing list. And a mailing list is the most important thing you can have if you are an online business.

A mailing list is instant money - if you have a mailing list of responsive readers who actually open your email, read it, check out your offers... as long as you are not offering crap, as long as it's good stuff, whether it is your own products or affiliated products, you are going to make money every time you push Send.

We do it every day and that is something that if you are going to do you need to build your mailing list, but as far as releasing your own product such as an eBook or software... Software is a lot more expensive to do than an eBook; I will say that right now.

Anybody who thinks they can get into the software business for $100 is wrong unless you are the ace programmer yourself and you are going to basically trade your time to make all the software yourself and you are also the ace marketer and you can also market it yourself and you are also the ace manager and you can manage it all yourself.

But to find somebody who is good at all three of those is pretty rare. Most likely either you are good at programming or marketing or good at managing, you are good at one of the three not all three.

My point is - software, from experience, trust me is a very expensive business to get into but it can be very profitable, because software seems to sell a lot better than say an eBook, unless an eBook is a full training course. Big training courses tend to sell very good.

An eBook, depending on the price, depending on the bonuses, there are a lot of variables there... but if you are just trying to do a direct sales approach to an eBook, the sales can be lower than say software.

It just is the way it is - it just seems that more people seem to be interested in software. For example with SureFireWealth.com we've noticed monitoring downloads of eBooks and software and videos, the number of software being downloaded is double or triple that of an eBook download.

I don't know why, it's just the way it's been, that's what our stats show us. So the software business can be very profitable but you will need some money to invest in it. If you are going to hire programmers to make the software, expect to pay probably a couple of thousand out at least onwards. Depending on what kind of software you are going to make, it might cost $5,000 or $10,000 or more. Some software such as MemberSpeed.com we have two to three hundred thousand invested in that software, but that software of course has made us millions, but think about your ROI.

But let's say you just want to get started, I would say a good way to do it would be to either write the eBook yourself, if you are a good writer or hire somebody to write a good book for you. Research a topic that is maybe hot right now. Hire, outsource, a good writer to write a 30-40 page report for you on that topic. Make sure it is very interesting to read. Make sure it flows nicely, make sure it keeps the attention - it keeps them reading, they don't fall asleep reading it... that sort of thing.

And then in that report you 'monetize' that report by having some affiliate links, if you don't have any of your own products yet, and you build your mailing list by giving it away. All you need to do is start a blog, go to WordPress.org or even Blogger.com. Get a blog going and anybody who goes to your blog - you have an opt in box or a link to go get your book for free and all they have to do is opt in - they put their name and email address and in return they get your book.

They learn something and now they are on your list that you are managing, either through your own in-house mailing software - as far as in-house ones I know Internet Marketing Center has one called Mail Loop, or else our MemberSpeed software has a full auto responder mail management plug in, you can go to MemberSpeed.com and check that out. MemberSpeed is also integrated with Aweber. So you could go to aweber.com and check that out.

Anyway, get that set up and then all you need is a blog and either an opt-in box - you know those kind that slide down when someone visits your page, or maybe it's permanently in the right-hand side, or the left-hand side, or the top of your blog. Or maybe it's one of those corner ads you see where you click the corner and it peels back and you can opt in for your free book. Those are all ideas for you that you can easily get started for under $100. A blog is free... let's say Aweber is $30 a month, MemberSpeed is $57 a month - the first 30 days are free for example. So, what I am saying is you can start for under $100.

To hire someone to write your book - from experience we have got really good writers who can do really good reports of that size for four or five hundred dollars. You don't need to spend a ton of money to get started. You know you have your monthly investment of under $100 per month, then maybe some one-time investments of five or six hundred dollars for a good report, or maybe you could hire somebody who can make some graphics - for under $100 we know people who can do that.

You might need a few other odds and ends. But basically for $1,000 you can have something going where you are building your mailing list and you are now establishing yourself as somebody who has authority on that topic that you are giving away - that free report that you are giving away - you are now becoming an authority. And your blog could be related, should be related, to your report somehow, so that they keep coming back to your blog because inside your report you have links to your blog. They can come to your blog, they can join your RSS feed, they can bookmark it and put it in their favorites, whatever.

Some other things you can do now is some social marketing - it's crazy nowadays - open a FaceBook account, open a MySpace account, get a LinkedIn account, get a Twitter account - all these things can help you to drive traffic to your blog for free.

YouTube - you could make some crazy videos or make some informative videos, whatever you want, and put them on YouTube, as long as they are under five minutes each, and start a YouTube channel. Put that channel on your blog and then anybody who goes to your blog... they can subscribe to your YouTube channel, or they can go watch your videos on YouTube or vice versa. Anybody who is on YouTube can find your videos and then as a result they can subscribe to your YouTube channel or visit your blog.

So now you are starting to get traffic from different places and another way you can get traffic for free is article marketing - we have done it for many, many years. It works. It is simple. Yes, it takes time but we get thousands and thousands of views to our literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles that we have out there right now and all those views are bringing people back to our site.

So either write articles yourself or hire somebody to write articles for 20 or 50 bucks. You know you can get really good 1,000 to 1,200 word articles written for like $50. Go to Elance.com, Guru.com places like that to find a freelance writer, and you put articles out there, people read the articles, they come to your blog and then now they are joining your mailing list.

So the main thing is you can get traffic for free from all over the place if you spend a little time in the beginning and a little money, not a lot... you don't need a lot of money just a little, but you do need to invest something.

There are a lot of people with the wrong mindset who expect something for nothing all the time, and that is totally the wrong mindset. You have to give before you can get and - whether that is giving something for free so that you can get something in return, or you are paying money so that you can get something in return - you have to give before you can get. That just goes along with the mindset. But once you give enough it is going to start coming back many times over.

So, self-publishing... that is a real simple way... anybody can get started in the publishing business online. Really, really cheap. All you need is a little time, a few hours a day in the beginning, or whatever it takes, and then get it going. Once you have your mailing list built up you can start doing things like releasing a second product, releasing a few more reports, and send an email to that list and now they can get a few more reports. Maybe you can start selling some books.

Now let's say you have a mailing list of five to ten thousand people built up. You have a lot of visitors, a lot of traffic going to your blog every day. You have people on your social site, like maybe have a couple of hundred friends, maybe a thousand on your FaceBook account, a thousand Twitter followers... things like that, and now when you release your next product all you need to do is mention it on those places and you can instantly get people to check it out, go buy it, give you testimonials, whatever.

And once you make a good product that you are selling, then you can start doing things like setting up an affiliate program, finding joint venture partners to help you promote your book, things like that. And maybe you want to do something like a video course, maybe you want to do something like an audio course, or maybe you interview people and you sell those interviews.

And maybe you want to do a video course where you make videos showing how to do something to help people out. There are so many methods to publish nowadays that you don't just have to stick to the eBook format. There are many, many ways to publish things.

There are even things like selling products online but delivering it offline. For example, Louis and I do that with our Instant Video Empire DVD collection. We market it 100% online but a fulfillment company puts all that together for us and they send all those videos as physically-shipped products to our customers all the way around the world and then they get it right through their post box.

An easy way to do that is through Kunaki.com. We have done that a few times where we have marketed 100% online. All you need is a sales page, drive traffic to it and when people buy it, Kunaki sends out that DVD or CD to your customer and they get it like a couple of days later. So nowadays you can really mix the online and offline publishing so to say. You can market it all online and it can be delivered offline and you don't even see the product because a fulfillment company does it for you.

And that is the beauty of the Internet nowadays. There are so many things you can do. And it's really low cost so I definitely, definitely recommend the Information Publishing industry and especially now with the recession.

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 1

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 2

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 3

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 4

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 5

Jeremy Gislason Interview: Transcript Part 6

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